Such a vehicle body side portion structure has been proposed in Patent Literature 1 by the present applicant.
The structure includes a side sill having a hollow profile of substantially rectangular cross section formed by a side-sill outer member and a side-sill inner member. The side-sill outer member has a U-shaped cross section and includes a vertical wall disposed at an outer side thereof, an upper wall integrally extending from an upper end of the vertical wall toward a passenger compartment, and a lower wall integrally extending from a lower end of the vertical wall toward a passenger compartment. The vertical, upper and lower walls of the side-sill outer member respectively have concave bead parts inwardly concaved toward a hollowed inner part of the side-sill outer member to enhance the strength thereof.
The structure also includes a center pillar having at a lower part thereof a connection wall part to be laid on and connected to upper and vertical walls of the side-sill outer member.
However, the structure of Patent Literature 1 also has a corner part between the upper and vertical walls of the side sill, which corner part is liable to undesirably contact or interfere with a corner section of the connection wall part of the center pillar.
More particularly, when the corner part of the side-sill outer member has a radius smaller than that of the corner section of the connection wall part of the center pillar, the corner part of the side-sill outer contacts the corner section of the center pillar, causing undesirable interference between the corner part and the corner section.
The corner part of the side sill may be designed to have a radius so as not to interference with the corner section of the center pillar, but when priority is given to productivity and strength, radius selection for the corner part is limited.